Yes, you read it right. You can buy a prototype of an EVM for a cost of Rs 1,700 on e-commerce website amazon.in.
The machine which first went on sale in November 2016, is available as a DIY or Do It Yourself product. A buyer needs to buy atleast 4 machines to complete the transaction, as per the online shopping platform.
As per the description available on the website, “This kit is an effort to design a prototype of an electronic EVM which stores the user data. There is user interface to vote. Each user can vote only one time. This is ensured through control unit”.
The product description further claims that the EVM is secure and cannot be tampered.
“After the voting has been done the system demands a unique password to read the voting data that is the number of votes each candidate has got. Hence it is secure”.
The description also says that electronic voting machines have now replaced the traditional mechanism of voting due to several advantages like security, automatic counting etc.
The product is sold by KitsGuru, a company founded in 2009. They claim to have developed more than 500 hundred vocational self-learning kits to make world of electronics accessible and easy to understand to any person possible.
Yesterday, Delhi’s ruling AAP Party MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj gave a live demonstration in Delhi Assembly to prove that Electronic Voting Machines can indeed be rigged using ‘secret codes’. The machine used for the demonstration is believed to be a replica of the EVMs used in polling, and not the actual machine.
Explaining how EVMs work, Bhardwaj first conducted a mock poll on the floor of the House. In full view of cameras, Bharadwaj voted two votes each for the AAP, the BJP, Congress, BSP and the SP. He then reset the machine and conducted a repoll claiming that machines can be tampered with using a secret code.
After Bhawdwaj’s demo, the product is getting some hilarious reviews on the website.
“I always had a dream. To become PM of India. Thanks to Mr. Arvind Kejriwal, now, my dreams can now become reality. I'll just nominate myself for the required positions in the journey to PM position and rig the EVMs just like our respected Sri Sri genius Kejriwal saarji and his super-Einsteinesque ministers PROVED using this homemade DIY kit” said reviewer Navneet Khare who gave the product a five star rating.
